


Amy's child

by Kail_lizuc



Series: A child, a box, and his babysitters [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Amy is a good parent, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Child Doctor (Doctor Who), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s06e01-e02 The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25559908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kail_lizuc/pseuds/Kail_lizuc
Summary: Amy wasn’t exactly sure when she’d started referring to the Doctor as 'her child' in her mind, but it didn’t feel wrong, so she didn’t stop.She (and Rory) had been taking care of him for quite a while, after all. It was only normal that the motherly instincts she didn’t even know she had would start up, right?Or, Amy's take on watching the Doctor die when he's just a child.
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Eleventh Doctor & Amy Pond, Eleventh Doctor & Amy Pond & Rory Williams
Series: A child, a box, and his babysitters [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840747
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	Amy's child

Amy looked around the landscape, frowning at the heat as she thanked the driver that got them there and saw the bus off.

“This is it, yeah? The right place?” she asked.

“Nowhere, middle of?” Rory raised both eyebrows, gesturing vaguely around to make a point. “Yeah, this it.”

Before they had the time to start wondering if maybe they shouldn’t have followed some random coordinates inside an unsigned envelope that just so happened to be TARDIS blue, a voice came up from behind them.

“Howdy!”

They both turned around to find the Doctor lying on the hood of a car, wearing the same clothes as ever, with the blue bowtie and the tweed jacket.

“Doctor!” she exclaimed, running up to him.

“It’s the Ponds!” He jumped off the car, laughing, and embraced her in a hug. “Hello, Pond.”

“So, someone's been a busy boy then, eh?” she commented once they pulled away from each other.

He beamed excitedly, “Did you see me?”

“Of course.”

“Stalker.”

“Madman.”

“Husband,” Rory spoke up.

As the Doctor greeted Rory, she took a moment to study the child before her— Well, he wasn’t really a small child anymore, was he? More like a teenager, or the Time Lord equivalent of one anyway. She hadn’t realized before just by watching the few recordings and movies they had found of him, but he had grown quite a bit since they last met; he was taller, his height up to Amy’s shoulder and a bit more, and his voice wasn’t as high pitched as before, even if it still sounded childish enough.

It had definitely been more than two months for him since they last met, she was sure. He couldn’t have grown that fast when he had barely changed in all the time they’d travelled together.

Also, he was wearing a Stetson— Wait, no, never mind; a shot rang in their air just as the hat was flown away. They all turned around in unison, the sight of River with her gun out making both Amy and Rory frown.

“Hello, sweetie.”

“River!” Amy chided, and she would’ve added something along the lines of _you can’t just go around shooting children_ if the Doctor hadn’t laughed aloud, clearly delighted to see the woman again and paying little to no mind to the shot Stetson.

He ran towards her, arms extended with one obvious objective, and River complied amusedly after putting away her gun.

✿

The Doctor took them out on a picnic, nice and simple, and they were enjoying themselves even if they wondered when they were going to Space, 1969.

Amy noticed the Doctor eyeing the bottle of wine, and cocked an eyebrow.

“Don’t you even think about it, mister,” she warned. “That’s for the grown-ups.”

He shot her a betrayed look and pouted, “I’ll let you know, I’m 1103, Pond.”

“Come on, Amy. He’s technically a teenager now, let him try it,” Rory defended.

Amy made a show of rolling her eyes exasperatedly, which she noticed River snickering at, but gave in, “Alright.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor grinned as he was handed the bottle, taking a swig and promptly spitting it out, much to Amy’s amusement. “Oh, why it's horrid,” he complained, his face twisting as if he had bitten a lemon, “I thought it would taste more like the gums.”

“Told you it’s not for children.”

✿

“Whatever happens now,” the Doctor said in that commanding tone he often used when they were saving the world, the one that betrayed his years of experience beyond his childish appearance, “You do not interfere.”

And if Amy had known that he was walking willingly to his death, that he would walk away from them and not come back, she would have stopped him. She would have pleaded him to not go, to stay with them and _live_.

But she didn’t know. And just a few minutes later he was getting shot at by that astronaut, and he was _dying_ , and he—

He looked at her, at them, his eyes so sad, his face twisted in a silent apology as he was shot again, and _oh God, please no—_

And the astronaut was gone, and the Doctor, the _kid_ she had cared for all these years, was on the ground, unnaturally still, cold, and _gone_.

Dead.

And she sobbed, and pleaded, and cried, because this couldn’t be happening. The Doctor couldn’t be dead. Her child couldn’t have died. And any moment now he’d surely open his eyes again and smile at her with that mischievous grin he always had when he managed to pull a particularly complicated trick, and he’d take them to another planet and ramble about every species and historical fact he remembered like the happy kid he was.

Except that he couldn’t do that anymore.

He was dead, gone. There was nothing she could do about it.

And as she watched the flames burn his body on the boat, it occurred to her that that picnic was going to be the last memory she ever had of him.

✿

The Doctor was back, except that he wasn’t.

The Doctor they found at the diner, the one enthusiastically pulling levers and pressing buttons in front of her, wasn’t her Doctor. Not yet.

He was a younger version of himself; One that didn’t quite reach her shoulders yet; One whose voice was as squeaky and high pitched as the last time they had travelled together; One that was two hundred years too young; One that hadn’t just been shot to death.

And as happy as she was to see him again, to see him bouncing around and rambling about nothing, to see him _alive_ , she just couldn’t forget what she saw. Couldn’t forget the way he had looked at her in that moment, when he knew he was going to die and—

And so she walked away from him. She hid under the console floor, and it was barely a minute before River showed up too.

“We can't even tell him we've seen his future self,” River insisted, and it was only because she looked just as pained as Amy felt that she agreed to not tell the Doctor.

However, this was the Doctor they were talking about, and he didn’t just trust them in this. He was too smart for that, even as a young child, and Amy couldn’t help but wonder why did the Doctor, the older Doctor, do what he did and put them in this situation.

“You're going to have to trust us this time,” River said to him.

“Trust you? Sure. But, first of all, Doctor Song, just one thing,” he walked up to her, tilting his head back to face her. In his face, Amy couldn’t see even a tiny bit of the warmth and affection the older Doctor had shown when looking at River. Amy wondered how she could bear it, seeing the Doctor not recognize her the more they met; she didn’t think she would be able to handle it if it were her instead. “Who are you? You're someone from my future. Getting that. But who?”

When she didn’t respond, he nodded slightly to himself, not once his eyes leaving her face.

“Okay. Why are you in prison? Who did you kill, hmm?” he raised an eyebrow at her, and narrowed his eyes, “Now, I like you and all, but _trust you_? Seriously?”

Amy clenched her fist tightly, and decided she didn’t want this to carry on any further. She just wanted to get this over with, and fulfil her child’s last wish— _Space, 1969, and whatever awaited them there_.

“Trust me.”

And he did.

✿

There was something inherently surreal about seeing a small child sitting confidently in _the President of the United States’ desk chair_ , all the while making the conversation, and by extension everyone involved, go the way he wanted it to go (beyond the fact that he still had at least ten guns pointed at him). And just because said small child was the Doctor and she’d seen him do things far more strange didn’t mean it felt any less surreal.

Amy sometimes wondered if that was a superpower all Time Lords possessed, of if it was just a Doctor thing. Either way, it was impressive as heck.

“Five minutes?” Canton Everett Delaware III —or just Canton, really— offered, absolutely thrilled by the mystery the Doctor was.

“Five.”

The other man, the one that Amy guessed was head of security or something, wasn’t so convinced. Amy understood his point of view; some random kid had just sneaked into the highest security office in the States, spied on a secret meeting after two weeks of impossible calls from _another_ kid, and then acted like he owned the place. Amy could understand where he was coming from with his wariness. That didn’t mean she wanted to see her child being pointed at by a bunch of guns right after…

Thankfully, the man interrupted her train of thought, “Mister President, that boy is a clear and present danger to—”

“Mister President, that boy walked in here,” Canton cut him off, “with a big blue box and three of his friends, and that's the man he walked past. One of them's worth listening to.”

That seemed to silence the other man up, and Amy knew in that moment that the Doctor had, once again, gotten what he wanted.

“I say we give him five minutes. See if he delivers.”

The Doctor grinned, “Thanks, Canton.”

✿

Amy wasn’t exactly sure when she’d started referring to the Doctor as _her child_ in her mind, but it didn’t feel wrong, so she didn’t stop.

She (and Rory) had been taking care of him for quite a while, after all. It was only normal that the motherly instincts she didn’t even know she had would start up, right?

✿

Her motherly instincts, if they even _were_ motherly instincts, didn’t stop her from shooting at that little girl crying for help inside the spacesuit right after telling the Doctor she was pregnant.

✿

Three months went by in which she ran and ran, trying to find information on creatures she couldn’t remember, until she was in back in the TARDIS with the Doctor and Rory, and she couldn’t be happier even if she worried.

Then she was kidnapped, and then she was saved. She had no idea what happened in between or how long she’d been gone, but she didn’t care because her husband and her child were there, and they had finally defeated the Silence.

But, of course, the Doctor hadn’t forgotten her words back in the warehouse, and now she had to explain to her child why she told him first rather than her husband the nurse about her suspicions.

“Why do you think?” she asked rhetorically. “I travelled with you in this TARDIS for so long. All that time. If I was pregnant for some of it, wouldn't it have had an effect?”

He looked at her, eyebrows furrowed, and she sighed.

“I don't want to tell Rory his baby might have three heads or, like, a timehead, or something.”

At that, he smiled amused, “What’s a timehead?”

“I don't know, but what if it had one?”

“A timehead,” he giggled, shaking his head slightly, and it made her smile too.

“Oh, shut up.”

And even if her child was still going to die one day in the future, right then, just for a moment, everything felt fine again.


End file.
